This week’s flash fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig involved a list of pretty unusual story settings, and although I was hoping for Starbucks during the apocalypse, a random number generator gave me #13: Ancient Sumer.

Where is Sumer? I had to Google it to. Turns it out it’s not so much where, but when:

Wikipedia: Sumer was an ancient civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq, during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age … modern historians have asserted that Sumer was first settled between ca. 4500 and 4000 BC by a non-Semitic people who may or may not have spoken the Sumerian language. These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called “proto-Euphrateans” or “Ubaidians“, and are theorized to have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia (Assyria). The Ubaidians were the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery.

Another fun story to write!

Sumerian Sandstorm

Sergeant Jackson leaned forward, trying to see through the windshield.

Every time I look at something I wrote a while ago I keep thinking about what I do differently. But I guess a writer has to accept that what they wrote was finished at the time they wrote it. Time to move on to something new.